Our present ecological crisis, the biggest single practical threat to our human existence in the middle to long term, has, religious people would say, a great deal to do with our failure to think of the world as existing in relation to the mystery of God, not just as a huge warehouse of stuff to be used for our convenience.

The Church exists to connect people at the level of their hunger for a new world.

I think there is a great deal of interest still in the Christian faith.

Perhaps a good resolution for the new year would be to keep asking what world we want to pass on to the next generation. Indeed to ask whether we have a real and vivid sense of that next generation.

How do we live in a way that shows an understanding that we genuinely live in a shared world, not one that simply belongs to us?

In loving his own productive, generative, generous love, God loves all those ways in which that love can be realised in creation.

Let's cut to the chase, the sharia controversy. I don't think I, or my colleagues, predicted just how enormous the reaction would be. I failed to find the right words. I succeeded in confusing people. I've made mistakes - that's probably one of them.